Why should the crypto community pay attention to room temperature superconductors?

Written by: Fishery Isla, Core Contributor of Biteye

Edited by: Crush, Core Contributor of Biteye

Recently, the term "room temperature superconductor" has been rapidly spreading worldwide and attracting widespread attention, with related investment targets continuing to trade hotly in the capital markets.

The entire narrative originated on July 22, when a South Korean research team published a paper claiming to have discovered a room temperature superconductor LK-99 crystal that can achieve superconductivity below 127 degrees Celsius in normal atmospheric conditions, which is almost equivalent to having superconducting properties in any environment.

Room temperature superconductors have long been the holy grail of physicists, and undoubtedly, if this discovery is true, the fourth technological revolution will arrive, requiring a complete overhaul of all electronic devices in human society, even the most basic wires will need to be replaced, fundamentally changing the rules of the game across all industries.

01 The Delayed Reaction of the Capital Market

As a research result that could potentially disrupt existing human society, it can only be confirmed after global peer review and repeated experiments, and then pushed towards application.

However, before the academic community could reach a conclusion, the capital market unexpectedly welcomed a frenzy. On August 1, American superconducting stock AMSC jumped 71% in pre-market trading, with a peak increase of 150%, which was incredibly wild.

Yet, the capital market, known for its sensitivity, only reacted ten days after the South Korean team published their paper, which is much later than the usual hype logic. To understand the reasons behind this, let’s review what happened in the ten days following the paper's release.

At the time of the paper's release, it did not attract much attention.

On one hand, this scenario felt familiar; back in March, Ranga Dias, a professor at the University of Rochester in the U.S., announced the discovery of a room temperature superconductor, which sparked widespread public interest, but was later questioned by several institutions and deemed a false alarm, fading away.

On the other hand, the description in the South Korean team's paper was overly fantastical, deviating from established academic understanding. My intuition tells me that a room temperature superconductor is cutting-edge technology, and the preparation process must involve various high-tech methods.

However, the South Korean team's paper revealed a method akin to ancient alchemy, simply mixing a bunch of inexpensive powdered materials in specified proportions and burning them in a furnace, with equipment requirements low enough to be achievable in a high school lab.

As a result, some academic influencers on Twitter referred to the lab replicating LK-99 as "Kitchen," highlighting the low barrier to achieving the preparation process.

However, setting aside academic discussions and considering human nature: if this were academic fraud, the preparation method is so simple that it could easily expose the scam with minimal cost and time.

Moreover, the South Korean team experienced internal strife over the position of the third author (note: the Nobel Prize can have a maximum of 3 authors for a single award, and the first two authors' positions are already determined), so if LK-99 were indeed a fabrication, the team would have no reason to stage such a ridiculous drama.

Returning to the timeline ten days before the capital market frenzy, theoretically, a sample could be produced in three and a half days. However, for the first nine days, no lab worldwide produced a sample that matched the South Korean team's description.

But on the tenth day, laboratories in China and the U.S. announced positive results regarding the preparation of the superconducting crystal LK-99, leading to the capital market's frenzy on August 1.

02 Predicting the Timeline for LK-99's Preparation Process

If room temperature superconducting materials are indeed discovered, how long will it take for us to enjoy this wave of benefits?

To answer this question, we first need to understand why so many laboratories worldwide have only synthesized a few micron-sized samples to date. We need to understand why LK-99 crystals might possess superconducting properties and clarify why the South Korean team is willing to share this technology.

According to superconducting theory, if a special structure in the material can utilize the pressure between particles to lock them together (Cooper pairs), room temperature superconductivity can be achieved.

The South Korean team formed this special structure in a sample through high-temperature burning, where copper particles encapsulated lead particles, thus achieving the superconducting effect. However, this burning method is akin to a lottery; only if the particles randomly wander to specific positions during the burning process can the South Korean team's results be replicated.

This explains why the seemingly simple preparation process is so difficult for third-party replication experiments, and it also explains why the South Korean team has been unable to produce samples for so long.

At the same time, the South Korean team's decision to abandon secrecy and publicly share the technical details makes sense. If they had indeed discovered LK-99 back in 1999 and kept it secret for so many years, even failing to produce a sample, continuing to keep it secret would risk someone else publishing it first.

Given this, it would be better to go public, secure a Nobel Prize nomination, and profit from the patents they have already applied for.

From the current global laboratory replication results, it is evident that the success rate of preparing LK-99 using the methods provided in the South Korean team's paper is extremely low. This lottery-like preparation method is only suitable for the laboratory verification stage.

If it can be confirmed in the future that LK-99 possesses superconducting properties, the next step will require scientists to develop a method for large-scale, low-cost encapsulation of copper particles around lead particles to form special channels, which is not an easy task. At that point, governments will also need to coordinate with industries to ultimately achieve large-scale production of room temperature superconducting materials. Only then will the so-called fourth technological revolution truly begin.

Moreover, the widespread adoption of superconductors in consumer electronic products will take at least 20-30 years.

The primary scenarios for superconductors will be in high power and high precision applications, such as military and aerospace fields. To promote their use in consumer electronics, clear application scenarios and effective business models must be established, demonstrating significant user experience improvements and profit potential for companies to advance.

Additionally, the introduction of superconductors will require an upgrade and transformation of the electronic industry chain, including power supplies, controls, interfaces, and manufacturing equipment. The entire upgrade process from materials to components to products will require a long period.

In summary, considering the entire process from technology to industrialization and then to commercialization, a timeline of 20-30 years for the large-scale application of superconductors in the development and production of consumer electronic products is a reasonable estimate.

Therefore, in the short term, even if LK-99 possesses superconducting properties, it will remain at the laboratory and academic level. The current excitement in the capital market is undoubtedly driven by speculative trading.

03 AI and Web3 (Blockchain) in the Post-Superconductor Era

Finally, let’s envision what it would mean if humanity truly manufactured room temperature superconductors and the impact on other technological innovation fields.

On a macro level, the most direct impact on electrical and electronic products will be that all devices and products related to power systems will undergo passive upgrades, significantly reducing weight and volume, creating decades of sustained demand.

With such enormous demand, superconductors will bring about trillions in new industries. Just replacing the currently underperforming motors and wires will be an enormous project, leading to massive employment needs that could completely revitalize the currently sluggish global economy, much like how electrification transformed the world in the past.

At the same time, it will reshape the industrial landscape, putting many traditional industries under pressure to transform.

On a macro level, superconducting technology will also reconstruct the global value chain, with technologically advanced and manufacturing powerhouse countries gaining advantages.

Mastering superconducting technology will become key to enhancing a nation's comprehensive strength. It will directly affect a country's future position in terms of economy, industry, and national defense. This will stimulate competition among countries in the field of superconductivity. It will also change trade flows and trade content, with related raw materials becoming new important trade commodities.

Specifically, traditional fields such as electricity, electronics, and information will face disruptive impacts. Some emerging industrial chains will become new growth points under the transformation of traditional industries, such as the currently most favored AI and blockchain.

Currently, the development of AI is constrained by hardware computing power. Once superconducting materials are applied in the chip industry, there will be a qualitative improvement in computing power. How much improvement depends on the depth of human research into superconductivity. Superconductivity can enhance electronic circuits on two levels:

The first level is using superconducting materials in similar transistor structures (Superconducting computing), where chips will be faster, performance will increase by several orders of magnitude, power consumption will be lower, and they can be packaged more densely than current traditional transistors. The existing scale of AI training will no longer be an issue.

A deeper level involves further research into superconducting properties, opening up the field of superconducting quantum computing, which will lead to exponential improvements.

Superconducting quantum computing is a branch of solid-state quantum computing, falling within the realm of quantum computers. Internet and chip giants like Google, IBM, and Intel have been laying out research in superconducting quantum computing for a long time, accumulating some technology. If LK-99 indeed possesses superconducting properties, humanity's research into quantum computing will make a significant leap forward.

When discussing quantum computers, we must also address their impact on blockchain.

In terms of security, it is important to clarify that quantum computers are not adept at solving hash functions, so they will not be used for Bitcoin mining. The idea that "quantum computers will mine Bitcoin" is fundamentally a common misconception.

The threat of quantum computers to Bitcoin does not lie in mining but in attacking transactions. Quantum computers excel at solving certain mathematical problems that current computers cannot (due to time constraints), such as elliptic curve algorithms, which are foundational to almost all digital currencies or blockchain technologies.

It is important to note "certain types"; as long as the elliptic curve is updated to a quantum-resistant encryption algorithm at the software level, the issue can be mitigated.

Additionally, from a cost-benefit perspective, using quantum computers to attack the Bitcoin system is actually an unprofitable endeavor. The reason is that if the fundamental security of Bitcoin cannot be guaranteed, the consensus mechanism and user trust that underpin Bitcoin's value will collapse.

When Bitcoin loses its value support, it will become worthless. At that point, even if attackers manage to obtain all Bitcoins, since they will be worthless, the attack will lose all significance, merely a fleeting dream.

Conversely, the blockchain infrastructure DePIN will benefit from superconductors. Imagine that through superconducting technology, hardware efficiency can be greatly improved, leading to a revolution in productivity for zk computing, decentralized storage, decentralized transmission, etc. Blockchain confirmation times could become microsecond-level, and blockchain gas costs could drop by 100 times, ushering in the true mass adoption moment for Web3 akin to the iPhone.

It is foreseeable that breakthroughs in superconducting materials will accelerate the progress of human civilization. They will not only bring leaps in technological development but also provide more groundbreaking growth for existing innovation fields, including blockchain and Web3.

What we can do now is to patiently await good news from the academic community.